26th April
12 miles (19.3km) Silver City
Highway Camp (149.4) to Silver City (161.4)
Silver City
I had a dream last night. I was hiking across Antarctica. Two penguins were following me. Every time I looked behind me they were there.
I asked them, ‘Why are you following me’.
‘So you can eat us when you run out of food’, they said.
I woke up. Strange dream. It was about 3am and freezing cold. It was quite warm when I went to bed so I had unzipped my sleeping bag. Did the cold make me dream of Antarctica? Did my hunger make me dream of eating penguins?
I ate the last if my food at breakfast. Just a 12 mile walk to town on a highway. It was cold, very cold in the morning. Crunchmaster had ice in his water bottle and his Sawyer filter failed. They don’t work once frozen. Even if it looks like it is filtering water it actually does not. He was not happy. Which made me think, is my filter also broken! Talking about broken. My Patagonia jacket zipper failed. A couple hits with my titanium pot closed the zipper. Now it works again.
Thirty minutes into our road walk it started to rain. Then the sun came out, then it started snowing, then the sun came out again. Four seasons in one hour. But one thing stayed the same. It was cold.
Crunchmaster has been in pain for days. His feet are killing him, actually just one of his toes. ‘I’m going to get it checked out when we get to town’, he said. It might be broken.
I was craving ice cream. So we all ended up at Dairy Queen. One large blizzard has half the recommended daily intake of calories for an average human. Lucky I’m not average.
Rest
The three of us checked into the Motel 6 at Silver City. They have been nice to us. They gave us two rooms for the price of one. Yes, that’s right. Two rooms for two nights. At around $18 each per night. Bargain.
We ate Pizza. Oh boy did we eat pizza. Have you ever seen a sloth? That slow moving creature that inhabits the jungles in Central and South America. We were three slothes in the hotel room. We tried very hard to watch the PCT Class of 2015 video. But wifi was impossibly slow. Eventually we watched the whole video. I’ve added the video below. Watch it. It is very well done.
Next – Day 10 A Day of Rest
